


The Jedi Path

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: But Still Problematic, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Jedi!Ben, Not Underage, Padawan!Rey, thanks for nothing Snoke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:33:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: She’s Ben's world: the only thing he cares about, the only thing he needs, the only one who matters. That interest used to be focused on Rey's power, her talent, her fierce, uncompromising will. Platonic, if not innocent, but now—now he still loves her like a protege, but he wants her too. He wants her, and he can’t keep lying to himself about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mark this fic with an underage warning because nothing physical happens between Ben and Rey until she's eighteen. There is, however, significant discussion of her infatuation with Ben from the time she's sixteen, so please be aware of that. 
> 
> ReyloTrashCompactor has been helping me with this fic for months, and I owe her many thanks for her help. The good news is that I have half of this story already written, and I plan to stick to a 1-2 week update schedule until it's complete. 
> 
> There is no abuse between Rey and Kylo in this fic. The psychological/emotional abuse tag is included because of Snoke's mental abuse of Ben.

.

.

**WHO ARE YOU?**

**(i’m no one)**

\- _point of origin_ -

.

.

Here is a quiet truth that Ben has always kept close: he’s never alone.

Some powerful, compelling voice whispers secrets in his ear, shows him visions and makes tantalizing promises. When he listens well, the stranger who invades his mind gives effusive praise, telling Ben how strong and good he is. But if he ignores or disobeys orders, he can look forward to blinding pain behind his eyes, so miserable that it makes him vomit and weep.

His mother took him to a dozen different doctors throughout his childhood, desperate to solve the mystery of his debilitating headaches, but none of them ever discovered the source of his pain.

_There’s nothing wrong with him_ , a bewildered doctor once said. _Not physically, at least._

Ben has never told anyone about the voice in his head, at first because it ordered him not to. Now he keeps his silence out of fear that he’s mad, every bit as crazy as his family and his peers think he is.

Even when it doesn’t speak, Ben can feel this other presence lurking in the back of his mind. Watching and waiting, although he doesn’t know what for.

.

.

Han Solo swaggers off his newest secondhand ship—a (probably stolen) rustbucket that looks no more reliable than the last one. Dad squints against the brightness of Tatooine’s twin suns, strides over to Master Luke, and pulls him into a warm embrace.

He’s warier when he approaches Ben, maybe because he hasn’t visited the Jedi Academy in over three years. Then again, he’s always been too careful around his son, guarded with his words and hesitant with his affection. Never sure of what to expect from his unpredictable child, yet usually anticipating the worst.

Ben wishes he didn’t know these things, but his father’s mind is open to him through the Force, just like everyone else’s. And maybe this is why he has so much trouble trusting: because he can sense the ugly truths lurking beneath people’s facades.

Still, he throws a friendly arm around Ben’s shoulders and asks, “How’s my boy?”

“Twenty-three, as of last month, and much too old to be called a boy,” Ben says. “I’ll forgive you, though; I know you’ve never been any good at keeping up with birthdays.”

Ben means it as a joke, but his voice comes out sharper than intended, and his father’s touch falls away.

Even though Dad doesn’t say anything, Ben can feel the regret radiating off of him. Guilt for foisting his unplanned and unwanted child off on Luke thirteen years ago. Shame for being an absent father long before that. But there’s anger too, because he resents that his son never lets him forget his shortcomings.

“How are you?” Ben asks.

“Can’t complain,” Dad says, and now he’s smiling, an expression that deepens the lines bracketing his mouth.

His father’s hair has gone fully grey, his skin thinner and more wrinkled, since Ben last saw him face to face. And when they walk to the temple, he notices that his gait has finally begun to slow, his stride grown less powerful than it used to be. Ben looks away, unsettled.

Dad joins the Jedi for their evening meal, his overloud voice too exuberant in this subdued temple. The younglings beg for smuggling tales, the older Padawans for details of his adventures during the war. Dad brags his way through dinner, and his storytelling even makes Master Luke smile.

His father doesn’t show it, but Ben can tell how out of place he feels here. A man with no sensitivity to the mystical energies of the galaxy, whose faith rests in what he can see and touch, surrounded by the Force’s chosen few. He covers his discomfort with tall tales and laughter, but Ben can see right through him.

.

.

He lies awake, staring up at the ceiling, considering his future and his past.

Ben isn’t fooled by his father’s casual, if sudden, appearance. The truth of his family’s heritage broke across the HoloNet two days ago, and now half the galaxy knows that Leia Organa is the daughter of Darth Vader. Dad is undoubtedly here to check on Ben, to make sure he doesn’t act rashly in the wake of such news.

He doesn’t quite know what to do with this revelation. Master Luke already sat him down for a long, painful story about the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, but learning the truth has given Ben more questions than it answered.

Learning his heritage is confusing, infuriating, and relieving all at once. Ben is the scion of Darth Vader, one of the strongest Sith lords the galaxy has ever known. He comes from slaves and royalty, subjugation and power bound in his blood. And if Master Luke is to be believed, then his line can be traced back to the Force itself. As if the universe selected his family for some larger purpose, its unknowable ways woven through four generations of Skywalkers, moving them like pieces on a playing board.

Finally, Ben has a concrete explanation for his own nature, his difficulty reconciling the great and the wicked within himself. He’s the same age now as Anakin was when he fell to the dark side, and he wonders what his grandfather felt before he abandoned the light. Did he chafe against the strict and stilted ways of the Jedi? Did he struggle to let go of his emotions, to stifle his passions for the sake of serenity, like Ben does?

It’s the purest kind of consolation to know that he isn’t alone, that he isn’t some inexplicable mutation in an otherwise good family. All his life he’s felt weighted by the legacy of his famous relatives, the heroes who saved the galaxy. Ben has always known, on some level, that he did not truly belong among them.

And they know it too. That’s why neither his parents nor his master told him the truth of his heritage. Other people’s thoughts linger in the air, as tangible to Ben as the arid heat of Tatooine, so he senses his mother’s fear of him, his father’s confusion, and his uncle’s reserved worry. Things he used to attribute to his own failings as a Jedi and as a son, but now he understands.

His family suspects that he has too much of Darth Vader within him. That his temper and brutal tendencies portend something truly dangerous: another dark sider in the Skywalker bloodline.

.

.

The next morning, over breakfast, Dad asks Master Luke if he can borrow Ben for a short trip off-world.

“Of course.” Master Luke’s smile is false, though; he’s nervous that if Ben goes too far, wandering without duty yoking him to the Jedi code, he’ll abuse his power.

Ben doesn’t particularly want to spend time with his father. He trained himself out of that desire by the age of nine, a necessity borne from perpetual disappointment. But between an opportunity to spite Dad or Master Luke, the decision is easy.

Ben slices into the fleshy mound of his fried egg. He watches the crimson yolk run into his rice, as bright and viscous as fresh blood. “Where are we going?” he asks.

Dad grins, his expression so eager that Ben ducks his head, feeling guilty for not reciprocating his father’s good mood.

“Jakku,” he says. “An old friend tells me that’s where the _Falcon_ might be.”

Ben barely holds back a laugh, because of course this is why his father is so excited. Dad loves two things unconditionally and without reservation: Chewbacca and the _Millennium Falcon_. Chewie retired to Kashyyyk before Ben was born, and his father’s prized ship was stolen a few years ago, so it’s no surprise that he’s thrilled to reclaim one of his great loves.

He stuffs rice and eggs into his mouth, just to keep from saying something uncalled for. Ben feels calmer by the time he’s done eating, less jealous and resentful.

Still, he can’t help but say, “Jakku is the junkyard of the Western Reaches. You’ll be lucky if the _Falcon_ hasn’t been stripped for parts.”

Dad makes an indignant noise. “Nobody in their right mind would butcher that ship. It’s one-of-a-kind!”

_One-of-a-kind garbage_.

They leave after breakfast, and Dad promises Master Luke that he’ll have Ben back on Tatooine within a standard day.

Naturally. Because spending more than twenty-four hours together would be too much to ask.

Ben climbs aboard his father’s ship and claims the co-pilot’s seat. Some small, nasty part of him hopes that the _Falcon_ has been dismembered, its vital parts scattered to every corner of the galaxy.

They fight from the moment they leave Tatooine, arguing over everything from what to eat for lunch to Ben’s piloting style—which is exemplary, not that his father will admit as much.

After three hours of sniping at each other, Dad says, “I swear you act more like your mother every day: a hard-headed pain in my ass.”

“Funny,” Ben says, even though he doesn’t find this funny at all. “She always says I get my stubbornness from you.”

They’re both so quick to blame each other for their failures, his parents—their failure of a son in particular. His parents love each other, but it’s no wonder they spend more time apart than together.

Dad grumbles a quiet apology, which Ben ignores.

They don’t speak for the rest of the journey to Jakku.

.

.

Ben has seen many inhospitable and unfriendly places over the years, traveling with Master Luke on Jedi business. And out of all the dirty corners of the galaxy that he’s encountered, Niima Outpost might be the grubbiest, most lawless shithole of the bunch. It’s a scrabbled-together settlement, far too uncivilized and sparsely inhabited to qualify as a town. Dad says that there are cities on Tatooine with a higher population than the entirety of Jakku, and from the looks of this outpost, Ben can believe it.

He tugs at the collar of his robes, thankful at least that he’s wearing white and dun, the pale colors drawing less of the searing sun’s attention. This planet is dry and hot, if less impossibly arid than Tatooine, but still uglier than a bantha’s backside.

Dad spots the _Falcon_ within three minutes of landing, sniffs out its current owner—a hideous, hulking brute by the name of Unkar Plutt—and haggles with him over the price of the ship.

While his father argues Plutt down to a reasonable sum, Ben looks around the outpost. The people seem to be an inharmonious blend of various species, largely unknown to him. Most of the locals are busy hauling or cleaning salvage, probably preparing to trade their scavenged prizes for whatever passes for money on this backwater world.

Ben hears a guttural grunt, a low sound full of frustration, and turns to see a girl in the middle of the square. She struggles to pull a net full of junk toward Plutt’s blockhouse, her skinny arms trembling from the effort. He’d guess her to be about twelve or thirteen, but she’s so malnourished that it’s difficult to determine her age with any precision.

Someone else notices the girl’s difficulty, a teenage scavenger who approaches her in a hurry. He’s the only other human in sight, and if Ben had greater faith in the goodness of their species he might expect the boy to offer his help. As it is, he’s unsurprised to see him attack, pushing the girl out of his way so that he can steal her goods. Ben draws his lightsaber and rushes over—

But before he can reach them, the girl hits the older boy upside the head with her quarterstaff. He wails, clutches his bleeding temple, and curses her in at least two languages before darting away. Clearly this child can take care of herself, but Ben finds himself drawn to her anyway.

Misery emanates from every being at Niima Outpost, the weight of their collective dissatisfaction and distress so heavy that Ben has been trying to block it since he stepped off his father’s ship. But this girl’s pain stands out among the despair surrounding her, the magnitude of her loneliness impossible to bar against or ignore. She’s been here for so long, he thinks, abandoned on this remote planet. Left to rot and fend for herself.

And there’s something else, something more than her suffering that catches his attention. Her very presence brightens the spiritual space around her. A warm, golden point of power within the wider web of the Force. Ben walks closer, and her aura becomes overwhelming when he draws near. It’s like standing under the full heat of Tatooine’s sister suns at high noon, blazing in its intensity.

Ben halts when she aims her quarterstaff in his direction, raises his hands, and introduces himself.

When the girl only stares at him, he asks, “Who are you?”

She scowls, hoists her quarterstaff over her shoulder, and says, “No one.”

Up close, he can see what a scrawny thing she is, tall for her age but painfully thin. Hunger and hardship are evident along every line of her childish figure, laced into the sharp jut of her collarbones and the hollows of her cheeks.

“Does ‘no one’ have a name?” Ben asks.

“None that’s your business,” the girl says rudely. Now that he’s heard more than two words from her, Ben realizes that her accent is surprisingly posh. Flavored with the dialect of some upper-class system, and he wonders how a child who speaks like a Senator’s daughter ended up stranded on a barbaric world like Jakku.

She grabs her net, brimming with dissected starship innards, and continues dragging it across the square.

“Let me help you,” he says. “That looks heavy.”

She stops, considering him with obvious mistrust. Ben doesn’t have to read her to know how rarely she encounters offers of aid; it’s written all over her suspicious, sunburned face.

“Fine. But you don’t get any of my earnings,” she says, her voice steady and fierce. “I did all the work, so I get all the portions.”

“Sounds fair,” Ben says, and he holds out his hand.

She takes it, gives a firm shake, and says, “I’m Rey.”

For once, Ben doesn’t have to work to smile. “Nice to meet you, Rey.”

Her net full of salvage is even heavier than he expected, and he wonders how a girl her size could move it at all.

“You’re stronger than you look,” Ben says.

A soft smirk pulls at the corner of Rey’s lips, but she doesn’t respond.

At the blockhouse, Ben finds his father still deep in unfriendly negotiations. He listens to the haggling for another minute before he loses patience, steps forward, and says to Plutt, “You’ll hand over this ship for free.”

Persuasion through the Force is a skill Ben mastered long ago—if one that Master Luke insists he reserve for truly dire circumstances—and Plutt’s face goes slack. “Of course,” he says, voice pleasantly compliant. “The ship is yours.”

Ben smiles. “Good doing business with you.”

Plutt disappears to the back of his stand, probably too confused to continue conducting business.

“That’s a handy trick,” Dad mutters. “Unfair, but handy.”

“Are you going to rat me out to Master Luke?” Ben asks.

Dad laughs and claps him on the shoulder. “Course not. I’d be disappointed if my son didn’t occasionally swindle cretins like that one.”

Rey looks up at him with open admiration, her hazel eyes too big for her gaunt face. “How’d you do that?” she whispers.

Ben shrugs and says, “It’s a trick of the trade.”

“What trade?” Rey asks. Her grip on her salvage grows looser, and the net slips between her slack fingers. “Who are you?”

Warmth blooms in Ben’s chest, because this truculent scavenger girl is taking the bait more eagerly than he expected. She’s strong, remarkably so despite her ignorance of the Force, and ripe for instruction. Still young enough to mold, yet too hardened by misery to swallow his uncle’s lessons uncritically.

With the right teacher, Rey could become something truly extraordinary. A weapon of greater power than Master Luke would ever know what to do with.

_She’s perfect_ , Ben thinks. Exactly what he’s been waiting for.

He wraps an arm around her narrow shoulders, a move as protective as it is possessive. Rey will be his apprentice—a decision Ben made the moment he discovered her—and that makes her his responsibility.

He feels his father watching, wariness springing forth within him.

Ben ignores this, looks down at Rey’s awestruck face, and says, “I’m a Jedi Knight. Just like you could be, someday, if you’re willing to work for it.”

“ _Me_? A Jedi?” She shakes her head. “But I’m just—”

“A scavenger?” Ben guesses. “Far from it. You’re much more than that, Rey. The Force—do you know what the Force is?”

She fixes her gaze on the sand beneath her feet. “It’s not real. Just some made up hocus pocus.”

It’s criminal, Ben thinks, that a girl who houses such power has grown up uneducated in the ways of the Force.

“That’s wrong,” he says, firmly but gently. “The Force is as real as we are, and if you come with me, I can show you how to wield it—”

Rey ducks out of his hold, draws her quarterstaff, and brandishes it at him. “I’m not going anywhere! And if you try to take me I’ll fight.”

“This isn’t something you can resist,” Ben says. “Being sensitive to the Force isn’t an ability you can turn off or hide from. You’ll carry this power whether you’re here or at the Jedi academy—”

“Then I’ll do it here!” Rey shouts, and she backs away.

_What an uncompromising, prideful little shit._

Ben catches her by the arm. He can’t let her run, can’t let her slip through his grasp. “You don’t understand. The Force—it’s all over you. You’re steeped in it, like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”

And now that he has a hold of her, Ben almost reels away from the power he feels thrumming under her skin. Raw, untapped energy, more concentrated than anything he’s encountered before. Not even _Luke_ exudes this kind of strength in the Force—

Rey rips herself out of his hold and hurries away, leaving the net full of scavenged parts behind.

Before he can run after her, his father grabs him by the front of his robes and says, “Ben! You’ve got to let her go.”

“The hell I do,” he hisses.

That lonely girl has the potential to shape the galaxy, and Ben isn’t about to let her slip through his fingers.

Dad shakes him. “Calm down and think this through. You can’t _make_ somebody become a Jedi.”

“Why not?” he asks, laughing. “You and Mom did. The two of you shipped me off to Master Luke whether I liked or not.”

Dad recoils, releases him. “That’s not fair. We did that to help you.”

“You did it to help yourselves!” Ben pushes him in the chest. He’s never laid hands on his father before, and when he stumbles backward, Ben sees just how frail he’s become.

It’s a sickening realization, and shame might subdue him if he wasn’t so furious.

“Neither of you wanted me in the first place,” Ben says. “Too busy with more important things to raise a child. And when I turned out too different for you to understand, too powerful for you to control, you sent me to Tatooine. Made me someone else’s problem and never looked back.”

_Deny it_ , Ben thinks. _Please deny it._

His father won’t, though. He can’t. Not with any sort of honesty.

Dad kneads the center of his chest, right where Ben struck him. “I’m sorry. It’s too little too late, I know that. But for what it’s worth, I wish I could go back and do everything differently.”

Dad’s only half-wrong: his apology may be long overdue, but it’s too much, not too little.

“You should leave,” Ben says. “You’ve got the _Falcon_ back, and that’s all you came here for anyway. So take it and go.”

“What about you?” Dad asks, frowning.

His father is afraid that he means to linger on Jakku—or worse yet, flee to some hidden corner of the galaxy, abandoning his family and the light side to seek out freedom.

“I’ve got unfinished business to deal with here,” Ben says. “Once I’ve secured the girl, I’ll return to Tatooine.”

“Be careful, son.” Dad grips his shoulder and gives it a paternal squeeze. “And—I’ll see you soon, all right?”

“Sure,” Ben says.

His father is lying, of course, even if he doesn’t mean to.

.

.

After the _Millennium Falcon_ has disappeared into the twilight, Ben persuades Plutt into parting with his personal speeder. None of the locals seem to know precisely where Rey lives, but that’s no obstacle to him. Ben lets the Force guide him, following the warmth of her presence, a bright spot amidst the dull energy of this desolate planet.

A great, orange sun sets as he seeks out his apprentice, slipping below the horizon in a wash of cooling colors. He sees fallen star destroyers, X-wings, and TIE fighters, rusted and flightless. This whole world is a graveyard, a burial ground for ships and soldiers twenty years dead.

By the time he circles around to his destination, dusk has given way to full darkness, masking the ugliness of this junkyard planet with shadows. As on Tatooine, the oppressive heat of Jakku turns into an uncomfortable chill at nightfall, one extreme replaced by another, and Ben shivers as he dismounts the speeder.

_This can’t be right_ , he thinks. _Surely she doesn’t live here._

Ben sees no house to speak of. Just a crippled imperial walker, half sunk into the sand.

He considers knocking, but it seems absurd to bother when Rey’s shoddy home doesn’t even have a proper door. Ben lets himself inside, navigating the cramped quarters of the AT-AT as quietly as he can. The last thing he wants to do is startle her any more than he already has.

“Rey?” he calls.

She doesn’t answer.

Ben finds her lying on a makeshift bed of dirty canvas tarps and repurposed pilot seats. Rey is huddled against the wall, curled in on herself, but she isn’t sleeping.

She rarely sleeps. He can feel her bone-deep exhaustion, how tired she is of working herself ragged and— _waiting, waiting, waiting_ for someone to come back for her.

Then he notices a tally-marked wall. Each sad little scratch carrying the weight of a full day, countless isolated hours immortalized on this broken walker’s bones.

Ben shakes his head. It’s suffocating, her loneliness, how worn down she is by the labor of maintaining hope.

“Rey,” he says again, stronger this time. “I know you’re awake.”

She sits up, pulls her legs to her chest, and wraps her arms around her knees. “Just leave me alone. Please?”

He can’t. Not now that he’s seen this, her pitiful excuse for a home.

Ben sits beside her, careful to keep a fair amount of space between them. “You don’t belong here,” he says. “You’re meant for far greater things than Jakku could ever offer you. Don’t you want to leave?”

Rey looks at him, and her anguish is so strong that he feels it as his own through the Force.

“Of course,” she says. “But I can’t. My family’s coming back for me someday, and if I leave then how will they find me? I’ll be all alone forever.”

Her voice breaks, and she rubs at her face, knuckling away her tears with obvious frustration. As if she can’t afford to indulge in such a luxury as crying.

Ben reaches out hesitantly, because any sudden touch could spook her, and pats her shoulder. “Listen to me, Rey. You aren’t alone. Not anymore. There are other people like you, like me, and you have a place among us, if you want to claim it.”

She sniffles, wipes her nose on the sleeve of her filthy tunic, and asks, her voice impossibly small, “What about my family?”

If they haven’t returned for her by now, then her parents are probably dead. And if not, they deserve a lightsaber through their hearts for dumping a child on this barren world. But he keeps his temper in check and only says, “Whoever left you here, they’re not worth waiting for. Do you understand?”

Rey frowns, but she doesn’t argue. “Have I got to decide right now?”

“Not this instant.” Ben thinks of the academy, of the many responsibilities he’s bound to, and says, “But I have to return home soon, so you don’t have much time to make your choice.”

He stands, straightens his robes. “I’ll stay at Niima Outpost for another day. If you want to leave with me, show up by sunset tomorrow.”

.

.

Ben tries to sleep aboard his father’s ship—which he supposes is in his custody now, since Dad and the _Falcon_ have been reunited. He rests poorly, not that he ever rests well, because the stranger in the back of his mind is talkative tonight.

_Don’t let her say no_ , he whispers. _That girl is too powerful to lose track of._

Ben feels the intruder more than he hears it, and covering his ears does nothing to block it out. It goes on and on, a masculine, wizened voice weighted by power and purpose.

_Think of all you could do together. All you could accomplish._

Suddenly he sees a nebulous could-be future: himself and Rey—clad in black, standing by his side, wielding a lightsaber the same vivid scarlet as his own—

“Stop it,” Ben says, but even when he opens his eyes, this vision overlays the sights around him, drowning them out.

He sees his uncle’s academy burning to the ground, Padawans and younglings dissolving right before him, their remains scattered on the wind. The new Jedi Order turned to ash.

_You’re strong. Capable of so much more than Skywalker will allow._

“Get out of my head,” Ben says, but it comes out as more of a plea than a command.

He steels himself for pain, for the mistreatment that his defiance is often met with. But the stranger only settles into some shadowed corner of his consciousness, and Ben cries from relief. He almost says, _Thank you_.

It’s sad, how he lives in fear of punishment—and even more pathetic that he laps up his companion’s approval, so hungry for acceptance that he’ll take any praise without concern for its origins.

.

.

He waits all day, sitting outside his new ship, hoping that every person who passes by will be Rey.

No matter what the voice in his head says, Ben will not force her to become his student. He doesn’t want Rey to resent him the way he resents his family. If she goes to Tatooine, it needs to be because she chooses that path for herself.

The sun sets, shading Niima Outpost in dull blues and purples. Foot traffic dissipates with the light, until Ben sits alone in the darkness.

Then he hears it: the sputtering rumble of an engine, growing louder every moment, until he sees the red of Rey’s speeder, rushing through the outpost’s open gate.

She dismounts before she’s even come to a full stop and hurries over to him, her quarterstaff and a small bag of belongings slung over her shoulder.

“You’re late,” Ben says. He isn’t entirely successful in making this sound like the admonishment it should be.

Rey looks up at him with something like wonder. “I thought for sure you’d be gone,” she says. “But you’re still here. You waited for me.”

She’s so used to being left behind, relying only upon herself. It will take time for Rey to expect anything different. That’s all right, though, because Ben is willing to be patient. He’ll share everything he knows, and someday Rey will learn that she can count on him.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a three-year time skip after this chapter, so things will accelerate pretty quickly from here on. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you ReyloTrashCompactor for all your help, as per usual!

.

.

**YOU NEED A TEACHER**

**(i can show you the ways of the force)**

\- _three years later_ -

.

.

“I’m ready,” Rey says. “I’m more than ready, and have been for over a year.”

“No,” Master Ben says flatly. “Now be quiet and meditate.”

Rey isn’t sure why he took her to the desert for this lesson. Meditation is as boring out here as it is at the Academy, although there is at least some privacy among the dunes, away from the cohort of Jedi and their apprentices. They’re a shameless lot of eavesdroppers; Rey knows this because she’s the most mistrustful, and that makes her the worst of the bunch.

She keeps her mouth snapped shut so that she doesn’t say something rude. Then Rey breathes, slowly and deeply, reaching for the steadiness of the Force. Pleading like a child won’t get her anywhere, but if she comports herself as a Jedi should, maybe he’ll relent.

Her voice is calm, almost serene, when she says, “A real lightsaber could be useful for my first mission.”

Master Ben makes a rough, irritated noise. He gives up on his meditation stance, straight back bowing as he turns, leaning toward her, and Rey feels suddenly small in the face of his frustration.

“It’s not as if you’ll be alone,” he says. “We’re going together, and besides, my uncle didn’t entrust us with anything dangerous. Hunting kyber crystals on an abandoned moon isn’t exactly a risky assignment.”

Rey allows herself to relax, falling back from her kneeling position much as her master did. She untucks her feet and runs a hand through her loose hair, feeling the grit of the sand against her calves, the cool of the early evening breeze. After an hour of mindful reflection, it’s a relief to move her body instead of simply _being_ in it.

“Will it really be that straightforward?” Rey asks.

“Yes. As straightforward and safe as missions get,” Master Ben says.

Rey smiles. “You sound disappointed.”

He glances at her, sidelong and unimpressed, but there’s a smirk pulling at his full, expressive mouth. “Don’t tell on me, all right?”

Master Ben leans back, resting his weight on his elbows, long legs stretched out, the tension in his body melting away. His aura has settled, warm and steady for once. It’s nice to see him this way. Different.

The other apprentices make excuses to disappear when her master is present, and Rey can’t quite blame them. Master Ben is sharp-tongued and unapologetic, quicker to lose his temper than the other knights, and every step he takes is heavy with barely restrained power. There’s a dangerous edge to him, a darkness that Rey can sense brewing in the Force around him whenever he feels threatened or angry.

That man seems far away right now. With his guard down and his drab robes dirty, he looks more like a teenager than a grown man. That’s wishful thinking, though. Master Ben isn’t a boy; he’s twenty-six, a Jedi, and her teacher. He might as well have been her guardian these last three years, as much as he dictates her days and protects her. It’s almost brotherly, or even paternal, the guidance he gives.

Not that Rey remembers what it’s like to have a father, and perhaps that’s the problem: she doesn’t understand the rules that govern a relationship like this, so any perversion of it fails to bother her like it should.

She inches closer, moving toward Master Ben on the pretense of stretching. When their shoulders brush, Rey shivers. The most innocent touch from him sends her heart racing, steals her breath. Her combat training has stalled in the last few months, thanks to this stupid infatuation that won’t go away.

It takes Rey a moment to pick up the thread of their conversation.

“I’d never tell on you,” she says. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

Rey didn’t mean for that to come out low and quiet, edged with the desire that’s been troubling her lately, but it did.

Master Ben stands abruptly. He tells her that it’s almost curfew and she should get back to her quarters.

.

.

Thirty years ago, the Death Star obliterated Jedha’s only city, and the blast’s shockwaves reshaped the surface of the moon. It’s been dead since then, but Rey can still feel the Force. It pulses like a heartbeat, deep, rhythmic, emanating from the ground beneath her feet.

“Someday I’m going to go somewhere that isn’t all desert,” Rey says.

Master Ben snorts. “You have had bad luck with that.”

Jakku was a little worse than bad luck, but Rey only says, “We’ll be bringing back dozens of kyber crystals if this turns out well. There’ll be plenty to spare for one lightsaber—”

Master Ben says, “Give it a rest, Rey. You’ll have your lightsaber when I say so, and not before.”

“You can’t just shut me up with that! I’m sixteen, and the strongest student at the Academy, so why am I the last of the Padawans my age to get a lightsaber?”

He looks down at her, chin tilted up, his gaze so imperious that it reminds her of his royal heritage. “Maybe you’re not as special as you think you are.”

Rey spends so much of her days reigning in her feelings, stifling and stuffing down her urges, but now she gives in. She pushes him, _hard_ , with a touch of the Force behind her hands, so that he’ll actually stumble back when she does it. She wants to do more, wants to slap him, shove him to the ground—

Master Ben catches her hand. It had been raised to strike him, and Rey hadn’t even noticed. Then he squeezes, tight, tighter, with enough pressure to sting, and suddenly she feels every inch of their height difference. She can sense his anger too, his offended pride, the temptation to shake her, racing along the connection that binds them. Fury radiates off of him in waves through the Force, as loudly as if he’d screamed at her.

“This is why I’m making you wait,” he hisses. “Get your temper under control, and we can revisit this conversation.”

Rey rips her arm out of his grasp. “That’s rich. If Master Luke made _you_ wait for that, you still wouldn’t have a lightsaber.”

Master Ben says, “I have higher expectations for you than my uncle had for me.”

“Oh really?” Rey asks. “I thought you said I was nothing special.”

Master Ben cuts his eyes at her, frowning. There’s something in his sidelong glance that she can’t quite read.

“Don’t be a brat,” he says. “You know what I think of you.”

She doesn’t though. Rey has no idea how Master Ben feels about her these days. He’s as careful to guard his thoughts as she is, truncating the flow of feelings across their bond whenever he’s collected enough to manage it. Today his anger weakened him, but that was the first time in a long while that she’d been able to break through the walls he’s building.

Rey knows she shouldn’t, but she reaches forward with the Force, tipping her mind toward his, subtle but grasping. Maybe if she’s gentle enough, she can glean his opinion of her without getting caught.

His mind is a jumble of distorted images, flashing by too quickly for close examination, woven through with a current of overlapping thoughts:

_she’s a stubborn creature_

(there are pitiful tally marks on the wall of Rey’s makeshift home, and it’s a shame that a girl like this has been wasted on a lifetime of scavenging)

_but so strong in the Force_

_maybe we should leave, go somewhere else, somewhere with forests and grasslands, so Rey can see how green the galaxy can be_

(she would smile, maybe even laugh, to smell the fresh, spring scent of a garden in bloom)

_we could run away, just the two of us, go someplace where it isn’t a crime to feel, where we’d be free to seize the power that’s inside of us_

_and I’d never be alone again_

(he’s spent so many nights afraid and isolated, sleepless—first at the home he hasn’t seen in sixteen years, then at the Academy his mother banished him to because he’s too violent, too strong in the Force, too weak of mind and heart)

“Rey!”

Master Ben grabs her by the shoulders, his hands tightening, hurting her, his mouth twisted and trembling. It ought to scare her, seeing him like this, so out of control, but it doesn’t. She feels, if anything, satisfied. He wants to run away. He wants to run away with _her_ , and maybe it isn’t for the reasons Rey would like, but it thrills her all the same.

“If you ever do that to me again, I'll do it to you,” Master Ben swears. It’s not an empty threat; his threats never are. “And I doubt you want me to witness the things you think of me these days.”

Rey bites her lip, barely holding back some small, pathetic sound.

So he knows. And really, how could he not? She’s been stealing glances at him whenever she can, constantly fending off hot blushes and the stupid impulse to touch him.

“Ben…”

Rey doesn’t even know what she means to say, but for once, she wants to speak his given name alone, like she’s more to him than an apprentice.

He scowls, and says, “Rey,” with none of the tenderness she’d whispered into his own name. Even if it wasn’t written across his face, Rey would know his displeasure and disappointment, because she can feel it, a thick, cloying cloud that surrounds him in the Force.

He must feel what’s in her own heart just as vividly: her need to be wrapped in his arms, to have his his greedy hands on her body and his soft mouth all over her.

He jerks away from her and says, “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” she asks. “Stop thinking?”

“Stop thinking about _that_ ,” Master Ben orders, his narrow face ruddy. He looks her up and down, and there’s something cruel in his gaze that makes Rey want to shrink in on herself. “Nothing can—even if we were allowed attachments, I’d never—”

Rey kicks at the dry, rusty ground beneath her foot, wanting to shout, wanting to cry. It isn’t fair, how much she needs him. It isn’t fair, that he looks at her and sees, at best, a protege, and at worst, a naive girl.

Rey knows that the more fiercely she declares she’s grown, the more juvenile she sounds, but she can’t seem to stop. “I’m not a child! I’m as good as a Jedi already.”

“Then act like one,” Master Ben says.

That command would carry more weight if he’d delivered it calmly, with the tranquility their order espouses. But her master is not peaceful or serene or passionless. He’s even less suited to the Jedi path than she is.

Rey says, as blithely as she can manage, “I’ll strive to follow your example, Master Ben.”

He glares at her, but there’s nothing he can really fault her for unless he wants to admit his own weaknesses, and that he’ll never do. For all the time he spends ruminating on his shortcomings, her master never claims them.

.

.

Jedha’s caverns have been broken and reshaped by the Death Star, but not ruined. They search through the rubble for hours, Master Ben leading the way by the glow of his green lightsaber. There’s nothing to see but the wreckage of a holy land, shadows and blackened stone, but Rey can feel the Force all around. It emanates from this place, a brightness that doesn’t need light to shine.

She knows when they’ve found the heart of the cavern. The vibrant pulse of the Force sounds in her ears, warms her skin, fills the air with the scents of iron and ice.

Master Ben raises his hand, waves lazily, and a boulder rolls on its side with an ease that Rey envies. She’s proficient at pushing and pulling with the Force, but her greatest strengths are her lightsaber skills and the fortitude of her mind. Rey knows she could study for a hundred years, and still she’d never be able to wield the Force the way her master does, manipulating the material world so smoothly, with his hands and desires alone.

There’s a cavity where the boulder once stood, and when they walk inside, Rey can’t help but smile. She ignites her blue training saber—a pale thing next to the blinding green of her master’s—and rushes to touch one of the crystals. It’s warm, like a stone that soaked up afternoon sunlight, and she can feel the thrum of brilliant energy under her fingertips—

The crystal breaks loose from a larger lattice and falls into her hands. For a moment, it’s clear and still, the steady beat of the Force frozen. Then the crystal hums to incandescent life, casting golden light around the cavern.

.

.

“Well I suppose you’ve gotten your way,” Master Ben says. He doesn’t sound angry or bitter, although Rey had expected both.

She looks away from him. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You didn’t do it at all,” Master Ben corrects. “Apparently the Force felt you were ready.”

He’s quiet on the long walk back to their ship. Rey reaches out to him through the Force, tugging on the tenuous line that binds them together, but he’s closed off his mind to her.

Rey touches the golden crystal in her pocket, still warm under her touch, its sharp lines oddly familiar, like it was meant to belong to her.

Master Ben takes the co-pilot’s seat. It spares them the perpetual argument over who is the better flyer, but today, Rey wishes he’d fight with her. Anything would be better than the stilted silence that brews between them all the way back to Tatooine.

They report to Master Luke first thing, and he congratulates her when he sees the golden crystal she’s carrying.

“You should build your lightsaber right away,” he says, his smile gentle. “It’s easier, when the connection is first forged.”

She must look stupid and childish, grinning so widely, but Rey doesn’t care. Jedi aren’t allowed any possessions beyond their lightsabers and the clothes on their backs, and she spent such a long time living like an animal on Jakku, without much to call her own. But this—this crystal, and the weapon she’ll create with it—will be hers.

“I’ll start tonight,” Rey says.

She turns to Master Ben, so flush with excitement that she can almost forget the way he humiliated her on Jedha. Enthusiasm would be unrealistic to expect, considering his reservations about this step in her training, but Rey almost flinches when she feels the heat of his anger, boiling in the Force around him.

Master Ben glances at his uncle, then over her head. “Good luck,” he says stiffly.

“I thought you might help me get started?” Rey asks.

Master Ben shakes his head, still studiously looking anywhere besides at her. “I’ve seen you build engines from scratch and fix broken hyperdrives. You know what you’re doing.”

“Well I’ve never built a lightsaber before.” Her voice comes out snappish, younger and weedier than she’d wanted it to.

“You’ll be fine,” Master Ben says. “And if you’re not, then Luke will step in. Right?”

Master Luke glances between them, a frown pulling at his mouth. “I’m always happy to assist any Padawan in need, but Rey is your apprentice. If she needs help, you should give it, Ben. You know as well as I do that compassion and service are the foundations of the Jedi way.”

Master Ben glances away, a muscle in his jaw working. “Right.”

.

.

Later, in the confines of the apprentices’ workshop, Rey asks, “Are you mad at me?”

Master Ben’s scowl twists, deepens, then smooths into a hard line. “What?”

Rey stops working. Crafting energy modulation circuits is a careful, exacting business, and if she doesn’t give it her full attention, she’s like to amputate her hand the first time she tries to use her lightsaber.

She sets it aside, looks at Master Ben, and says, “You’re angry. I can see it on your face, and I can feel it all around you. Is it because I—” Rey stops, bites her lip. She can’t say this so openly. “Is it about what happened on Jedha?”

He smirks. Rey wishes he wouldn’t do that, because it distracts her every time, to see that rare, spiteful little smile playing across his lips.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he says coolly. “A lot happened on Jedha. Are you talking about the part where you tried to strike me? Or when you invaded my private thoughts?”

Rey wants to hit him again, and make sure that the blow lands this time. Master Ben reads the people around him exceptionally well, even for a Jedi, so she knows he’s using the Force to probe every mind that’s weaker than his.

The hypocrisy of it pushes at Rey’s restraint, and she says, “I meant the part where you rejected me.”

Master Ben blanches, and Rey almost wants to laugh. It’s deeply gratifying to surprise him, even if it’s in a way like this.

“That conversation is over,” he says. His voice is hard and low-pitched, if deceptively quiet. That’s the way he speaks whenever he delivers a warning, and Rey grips the edge of the worktable to keep the tremors in her hands from showing.

“If it’s not that, then why are you angry?” she asks.

Master Ben runs a hand through his hair, frustration coloring every line of his body, but at least he’s looking at her now.

“I lied to you. I knew you were ready for this.” He gestures at the lightsaber parts scattered across the table between them. “Your skills are progressing so quickly these days. You started training a decade behind most of your peers, but you’re so far ahead of them. Three years into my training, I couldn’t do half of what you’ve mastered.”

Rey shakes her head and asks, “Isn’t that a good thing? That I’m strong in the Force?”

“Of course it is,” he says.

Master Ben walks around the table, so that he’s standing right beside her. He’s a large man, but he seems to take up even more space than usual in this modest workshop, his energy too great to be contained in such a small room.

Rey crosses her arms across her chest. “Then what’s the problem?”

He tilts his head, like he’s trying to puzzle out how to answer her. Then he says, “The problem is that I’m selfish. You won’t need me much longer. Another two or three years, and Luke will want you to take your vows. He won’t be wrong, either.”

Rey touches the disconnected pieces of machinery before her, picks up a diatium power cell, tests the weight of it in her palm. An hour ago, she was thrilled to be building her lightsaber, and now she might as well be holding ashes.

He’s right. It won’t be long until she’s ready to become a Jedi Knight. To stand on her own, to promise away her future to the new Order. That promise will bring her power, privilege, the respect of the galaxy. But the Jedi lead a cold life, and Rey doesn’t know if she’ll ever be ready for that.

“Does it really matter to you so much?” Rey asks. “You could always take another apprentice.”

It’s not a subtle question, and she’s certain that he understands why she’s asking. What she’s hoping to hear, what she’d like his attachment to mean.

Master Ben’s gaze sharpens. “I won’t be teaching another student. I never wanted an apprentice, until I found you on Jakku.”

Rey remembers that day with startling clarity. How this foreign man had looked at her, like she was both blinding and fascinating. It terrified her, but it also made her feel unique, important. It made her feel _seen_.

She smiles, despite the ache in her chest, and says, “Well I’m glad you made an exception.”

.

.

When they spar with training sabers alone, Rey defeats him as often as not. Master Ben depends heavily on manipulating the Force when he’s fighting, so it gives her an advantage when his most powerful weapon is taken out of the equation.

Rey is winning today. Master Ben is far stronger than she is, but he taught her how to infuse her strikes with the Force when faced with a larger opponent. It was one of his first lessons, and she made sure to remember it well.

These training weapons are only tame shadows of real lightsabers, but Rey still needs to pay attention if she wants to win. Master Ben’s green blade crashes against her blue, and she’s distracted, for a moment, by the bead of sweat running down his temple, the ferocity in his eyes. Rey reigns in her wandering focus and fights harder, pushing herself to keep going, to beat him, to win.

It ends with Master Ben on the floor, her lightsaber pointed at the vulnerable column of his throat.

He looks up at her with such respect, such awe and hunger, same as he did when he found her at Niima Outpost: like she’s a rare, precious thing that he’d stop at nothing to protect. Or maybe possess.

This might give Rey hope if she didn’t understand that his interest was rooted in a desire for power, not love. It isn’t really _her_ that Master Ben is so enthralled by, only her strength in the Force.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ReyloTrashCompactor is the best beta, in case you were curious. ;)

**.**

**.**

**YOU KNOW WHAT I’VE COME FOR**

**(i know where you come from)**

\- _two years later_ -

.

.

Ben’s mother visits Tatooine for the first time in years. A cohort of Resistance fighters comes with her, a larger crew than she could possibly need. He recognizes the most handsome of the pilots from a propaganda poster, but he can’t remember the man’s name.

She wraps him in a warm hug, and as much as he wants to rebuff her, he can’t. Not his mother. So he holds her close, breathes in the evergreen scent of her perfume, and says, “I missed you.”

Master Luke took him to meet her on Hosnian Prime not long after the news of their heritage broke across the holonet, and the Force brought them both to Cloud City a few months after that, but it’s been five years since she visited the academy. It’s easy to forgive, if not forget, when she’s standing before him now. Small and delicate with silver streaks sneaking through her dark hair, she’s still the strongest woman he’s ever known.

Mom reaches up, cradles his cheeks between her hands, and smiles. “It’s so good to see your handsome face again.”

_You could have seen it sooner_. Ben doesn’t say as much aloud, but he thinks his mother must feel that sentiment in the Force, because her smile falters.

He disentangles himself from their hug, if gently, and says, “I’ll find you at dinner.”

His mother stands straighter, chin tilted up. Whatever vulnerability he struck a moment ago is covered again now, shielded by the armor of her regality. “I need to meet with you and Luke together before then. I don’t have much time.”

He clenches his fists, takes a deep breath, and almost manages to keep his voice steady when he says, “If you have so little time to work with, why did you even bother coming?”

“Ben, don’t—”

He walks away, half-hoping that his mother will come after him. She doesn’t, though. Of course she doesn’t; she’s perfected the art of giving up on him, one way or another, ever since she left him in Luke’s care.

_That’s because Leia Organa never wanted a child, one like you least of all._

Ben rushes to his cell, locks the door, and sits in the corner curled into himself with his arms over his head, but the voice won’t stop and nothing can block it out.

_All your mother sees when she looks at you is Darth Vader, and she isn’t wrong._

“No, that isn’t—she doesn’t—”

Except, she does. Ben can see the fear in his mother’s eyes when he loses his temper. He can feel it in the Force when his presence takes her back to Alderaan’s destruction. To Darth Vader’s armored hand on her shoulder as she stands by, helpless, and watches her world burn.

.

.

Ben tunes out as much of the meeting with Mom and Master Luke as he can, because hearing about the threat of the First Order is only awakening fear under his skin. The voice that lurks in the back of his mind must come from a place of darkness, and although Ben doesn’t like to think about who it belongs to, he has a few theories, none of them very soothing. Now his mother is on Tatooine, not to see him, not to visit Luke or the Jedi she’s never felt inclined to join. No, she’s here on behalf of her latest cause. Rebellion, Senate, Resistance, it doesn’t matter what higher purpose his mother has pledged herself to, because she’ll always put duty above everything else.

“Ben? Are you listening?” Master Luke asks. Somehow, he manages to sound tranquil even when he’s chastising.

“Not at all,” he says, smiling, “but I can guess. Does it go something like this: the First Order is evil, and Mom wants to recruit all of us to fight them?”

She frowns, more disappointed than angry. “Don’t do that. Don’t dismiss the welfare of this entire galaxy because you’re upset with me.”

“Don’t do that,” Ben says back. “Don’t hang the galaxy’s welfare over my head to dismiss how upset I am with you.”

And there, now she’s more angry than disappointed. Ben smiles; he doesn’t get his temper from nowhere.

“You are your father’s son,” she mutters, smiling a tight half-smile.

Ben shrugs. “It’s funny how you always pin my failings on each other when I say things you don’t like.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Master Luke says. “Bickering isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

Ben plucks at the sleeve of his grey robes. “I don’t know why I’m even here. It isn’t up to me to request Jedi aid or to give it.”

His mother takes a deep breath, and he can feel it, the sadness rippling off of her. Ben pulls at his hair, wanting to rip her feelings from his head, then stands. “I don’t think this is a matter the Jedi should be mobilized for. We’re diplomats, philosophers, warriors, yes. But not a military. You can’t set a small army of Jedi on a battlefield and expect the galaxy to ever trust us as peacekeepers again.”

Master Luke will agree. Ben would know it, even if he hadn’t just read his uncle’s mood.

.

.

Dinner is an awkward affair. Mom insists that she needs to get back to the Resistance—especially since she received no help from them—but Master Luke says, “Leia. It’s an extra hour. Stay, please,” and she softens. She always softens for Luke, in a steady, predictable way that neither Ben nor his father can depend on.

Rey usually stays with the other Padawans at dinner, but tonight she approaches the Masters’ table, her cheeks flushed pink.

_Go back to where you belong_ , Ben says across their bond, but Rey only whispers back, _She’s your mother. I want to meet her._

“I’m Rey,” she announces, then holds out her hand to Mom. “I’m Master Ben’s apprentice.”

His mother smiles, takes Rey’s hand in her both of her own, and says, “I’ve heard so much about you from Ben and Luke. It’s good to put a face to your name.”

Rey smiles so beautifully that Ben has to look away from it. “Same. Master Luke is always lamenting that he couldn’t convince you to join us here, and I can see why. The Force shines so brightly around you.”

Mom laughs, but her smile dims a bit when she asks, “And what of your master? What does he say about me?”

_Don’t answer that. Don’t you dare answer that, Rey._

“He doesn’t talk about personal matters very much. He’s so private.” She grins at him and kicks his leg playfully. “But whenever he mentions you, it’s obvious that he loves you as much as he misses you.”

_You’re going to pay for this_.

Rey doesn’t even glance his way when she thinks, _Got any interesting punishments in mind?_

Ben feels his entire face heat, and he knows that he must be horribly, fiercely red.

Rey says it was an honor to meet a princess, bows her head, and hurries back to the Padawans’ table, still smiling.

As soon as she’s gone, his mother leans toward him and whispers, “Please tell me that you know she’s hopelessly infatuated with you.”

Ben takes a bite of rice, chews, swallows, and says, “She’s eighteen. She’ll get over it.”

.

.

Rey stands with her wrists tied behind her back and a blindfold over her eyes, dodging every swing of Ben’s lightsaber. He’s going easy on her—for now—but she’s still twitchy and fearful every time the heat of his saber grazes too close to her thigh, her shoulder, her cheek. He won’t hurt her, not even a little bit; she doesn’t know that, though. He’s keeping his mind closed to hers.

She’s doing well. She always excels in matters of the Force, especially when she’s angry or afraid. Right now she’s both.

When she moves too slowly for his liking, Ben allows his saber to catch on the end of her braid, clouding the air between them with the sour, smoky scent of burnt hair.

Rey jumps away and shouts, “This is ridiculous!”

Ben moves through a lazy form, swirling his lightsaber, mostly for amusement. “Well, you asked for an interesting punishment.”

“This isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Rey says.

Ben freezes, extinguishes his saber, and returns it to his belt. Then he walks around Rey, yanks off the blindfold and unties the rope from her wrists, perhaps a little rougher than she deserves, and says, “I know what you had in mind.” He isn’t shy about keeping the anger from his voice.

She has to learn. Whether it takes time or fear or humiliation, Ben doesn’t care, but this misplaced passion of hers is going to ruin them if she doesn’t let it go, and he’s running out of patience.

Rey rubs her wrists and shakes her hands, like she’s trying to rush the feeling back to her fingertips. She glances at him, then looks away, her throat working, trying not to say something.

Ben takes a peek, the most fleeting glance into her thoughts, and he sees—

_Rey lies sprawled underneath him, on her belly, hands tied behind her back, whimpering his name, again and again. He’s holding her by her bound wrists, pulling her closer until her back arches. Thrusting into her at a steady, brutal pace—_

Ben stumbles backward, heart pounding, furious with her and even angrier with himself. He shouldn’t have spied on her. If he had any idea—only, he did. He had some idea of what he might find, and he looked anyway.

Rey gasps, white-faced, turns around, and runs away.

.

.

That night, curled up in his bed, Ben can’t stop thinking about it. She _liked_ being bound, simply because it was his hands that had tied her up. Because it brought that shameless fantasy to the forefront of her mind. Now he sees it behind his eyelids, almost as sharp and vivid as it had been on the training field.

It’s making him hard. Ben rolls onto his stomach, burying his face in his pillow. He wants to touch himself, but he can’t _._ He thinks of her, the day he found her, and wants to be sick. But then the image of her as she is now comes to mind—such a pretty girl, tan and freckled, always giving him heated looks that he can’t mistake—and that starving child on Jakku couldn’t be farther away.

He doesn’t touch himself, but he bucks against his mattress, muffles his moans into his pillow, and comes in less than a minute.

.

.

Ben poaches a mission to Bastatha from Zetu and his Padawan. The knight glares at Ben and says, “Master Luke won’t let you do this.”

Ben claps Zetu’s shoulder, much harder than is friendly. “That might be true, if you were going to tell him about it. But you’re not.”

Zetu’s stare hardens, but he only says, “You’re not half the Jedi your uncle is.”

Ben can feel his smile souring. “On that we can agree.”

It’s a beautiful morning, still early enough that the sky bleeds pink and gold around Tatooine’s twin suns. It’s the kind of day that Rey would spend training, with or without his instruction. Sure enough, he finds her in the yard, moving through the advanced Form V sets that he taught her last week. He stops at the edge of the field, watching her. At calm, she’s graceful, so precise in her movements, long legs executing each step with perfection. Her lightsaber pike spins, stabs, and defends against a phantom enemy, her strikes as flawless as they are powerful. It still awes him, sometimes, her strength. Rey was made for this, to be an instrument of the Force, crafted by a greater power for even greater things.

He isn’t responsible for her talent, but he can be proud of the way he’s fostered it. Under his tutelage she’s gone from a wary, truculent child afraid of her own destiny to a forward (if still truculent) girl who knows her worth. She’s stunning, acting through parries to counterstrikes, then suddenly shifting out of Djem So’s powerful blows to Form III. Soresu is the perfect defense, a form mastered by some of the greatest Jedi in history, including his namesake, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Ben has always been shit at maintaining Form III, but he loves to fight against it. So he draws his lightsaber and strikes out at her with a quick slash. Now this he has a handle on, attacks hinging on the element of surprise. Some Jedi find Ataru dirty for this reason, but Ben isn’t one of them.

Rey spins around, catching his blade a hair’s breadth from her body, and says, “Well hello to you too.”

He’s stronger, and if he can overpower her before her temper flares, before the Force turns cold and dark around her, it won’t be difficult to get her on her back.

It doesn’t take long today. She’s distracted, the way she often is lately, and Ben lands a glancing blow to her belly. Rey doubles over, hissing out curses so foul that they might even scandalize his father. Ben pushes her to the ground and holds his saber to her throat, casting green light across her face.

“You might’ve won,” he says, “if you stopped thinking about kissing me.”

Ben returns his saber to his belt, its light safely snuffed out, while Rey props herself up on her elbows. She pants, face twisted in pain, but she still finds the gall to say, “For someone who isn’t interested in taking me to bed, you certainly spend a lot of time looking through my mind for glimpses of it.”

He knows he invited that, and worse, so does Rey.

He grabs her by the arm and hauls her to her feet. “Come on. We have a mission.”

“I’m hurt,” she says, clutching her stomach. “Can it wait?”

Ben shakes his head. He’s already lingered too long. If Zetu is braver than he seems, Master Luke could already know that he’s planning to steal another knight’s assignment.

“We’ll get you cleaned up on the ship.”

.

.

“Remind me of what exactly our mission is?” Rey whispers.

“To capture a spice runner whose cartel has been attacking the Republic fleet. He should be on-world tomorrow night, here at this casino.”

It’s a bright, gaudy establishment with golden walls, red velvet tables, and a gleaming glass bar where Ben spots four different species enjoying drinks.

“If he doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, what are we doing here tonight?” Rey asks.

“We’re getting the lay of the land,” Ben says.

If he also wants one night free from responsibility, a moment to breathe between mission after mission, to escape the stifling confines of the academy, that’s none of Rey’s business.

He takes her to the bar and orders two small glasses of a smoking green drink. Ben downs his in one go, then has to choke back a wheeze. It’s nearly as strong as the Corellian whiskey his father favors, as cold as ice but with a powerful undercurrent of chemical heat.

Next to him, Rey coughs, sputters, and covers her mouth with the back of her hand. Her voice is rough when she says, “Now I see why Master Luke says to stay away from alcohol.”

“Give it a minute,” he says. “ _Then_ you’ll understand why we’re not supposed to get drunk.”

Three glasses later—two for him and one for Rey—he decides they’ve had enough. Ben waves his hand at the bartender, who suddenly refuses payment, and takes Rey to the low-stakes sabaac tables. The dealer lets them sit down without a credit between them, and none of the other players have any problem with Ben openly discussing his hands with Rey. He teaches her the rules, then the best method for keeping up with the cards already played, how to count and evaluate probabilities.

She picks it up quickly, and Ben can’t help but tug at the end of her braid. Shorter now than it was before he burned it, only a little past her shoulders. It would be longer were it loose, he thinks. And soft, if easily tangled.

Ben lets Rey take his seat, then stands behind her with his hands clasping the edge of the table. She’s caught below him, between his arms, and if he bent forward, he could drop a kiss to the top of her head.

He shivers all over, and wishes he could ward away the warmth and fuzziness of the green drink. It’s diluting his willpower, making it impossible to ignore the fresh, sunshine smell of Rey’s hair. Ben bows lower, until he can whisper directly into her ear, “You’re doing so well, sweetheart. Not that I’m surprised.”

He can’t see her face, but he hears the small, weak noise that she makes. He catches the way her hands tremble, feels the warmth radiating off of her.

She’s his world: the only thing he cares about, the only thing he needs, the only one who matters. That interest used to be focused on her power, her talent, her fierce, uncompromising will. Platonic, if not innocent, but now—now he still loves her like a protege, but he wants her too. He wants her, and he can’t keep lying to himself about it.

Ben lets his fingers brush hers, then overlap them. The noise and bustle of the casino seems to disappear, and it’s easy enough to make the other players at their table wander off.

“Ben…” She’s panting now, and when he clasps her hand hard—too hard—she whimpers. “Please. Can we—could you get a room for us?”

The boldness of her question sends his blood searing, brings heat to every part of him, but it also slices him down to his good sense. What’s he doing? Flirting with his student, drinking with her, teaching her how to gamble? It’s stupid, a mess, the kind of thing a green boy would do to impress a girl.

Not that he has any more experience than a boy. Twenty-eight, and he’s unkissed, untouched by any hands besides his own, and ignorant. He probably couldn’t even please Rey if he tried.

Ben stands up straight, slides his fingers down her shoulder, because surely one more touch can’t hurt, and says, “Come on. I’ll find us some rooms.”

Rey turns around in her chair, straddling it backwards, and by the Force, he could throttle her for that. It’s an intentional seduction, the way she leaves her legs sprawled wide across the seat, open like she could invite him between them. Clumsy, but effective.

“Separate rooms?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m sure you heard me the first time.”

Rey looks down. She slurs the slightest bit when she whispers, “I guess I was distracted by the way you were touching me.”

Her legs tighten around the back of the chair, and he doesn’t think she’s playing at anything now, not with the way her thighs are shaking.

Ben pulls her out of her seat. “Listen to me, Rey. This has to stop now. If we act on anything, it will only hurt you and get me exiled from the Order.”

She looks up at him with glassy eyes, bright from drink and hope. “ _If?_ So you want it too?”

“No, I’m just half-drunk and frustrated,” he says. Then lower, sharper, “Any pretty thing would do.”

Rey tries to to rip herself out of his grasp, but Ben doesn’t allow it. “Do you understand me? I don’t want you; I just _want,_ and it’s hard not to take what’s offered when you keep throwing yourself at me. Do us both a favor and stop it.”

When he lets go of her, Rey’s eyes are glassy again, but this time with tears.

.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, ReyloTrashCompactor, for polishing this chapter for me!
> 
> And to everyone who's leaving kudos and commenting: you guys are the absolute *best* truly. It makes my day every time I get a notification. <3

.

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**DON’T BE AFRAID**

**(i feel it too)**

_\- six months later -_

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Ben has kept his hands to himself since the night at the casino, so Rey follows suit. He was clear on Bastatha, if cruel, and Rey can’t lay her heart bare again and again, only for him to toy with it and set it aside.

All she can do is practice. Maybe if she hones her lightsaber skills, masters meditation, and learns to adopt the mindful dispassion that the Jedi value—maybe then she can take her vows. Once she’s a knight, she won’t be at Master Ben’s beck and call anymore. She won’t have to struggle with wanting to impress him, to earn his pride and praise. And wanting to make love to him.

Today, she takes on three Padawans at once, turning through Soresu, because she has the endurance to outlast them. Every form comes naturally to her, but she has a fondness for attacking through defense. It warms something in her to wear down her opponents, to let them tire themselves trying to break through an unbreakable shield.

Nethi falls first. Rey closes in on her in the moment her trembling arm flags and slashes at her wrist. First blood: one down. Sula almost lands a blow, but Rey deflects it, counters, and turns it back around on her, grazing her lekku. She squeals, throws her saber to the sand, and curses Rey in both Basic and Ryl. It doesn’t take long to get Gared down, burned across his chest and hissing.

Nethi congratulates her, Gared thanks her for the lesson, and Sula storms off.

“She needs to get a handle on her anger if she wants to take her vows,” Nethi says, calm as ever.

Gared laughs, smiles at Rey, and shrugs. “Maybe not. Master Ben seems angry most of the time, and he got knighted.”

“You should see him when I best him in our spars too many times in a row,” Rey says. “He throws a temper tantrum.”

Gared and Nethi don’t laugh. They don’t say anything at all, and Rey knows before she turns around that Ben is right behind her. She can feel his presence approaching, now that she’s paying attention.

“The two of you can leave,” Master Ben says.

Gared and Nethi hurry off, leaving Rey alone with her teacher.

“Come here,” he says, and when she doesn’t budge, he takes her by the wrist and pulls her along behind him, away from the training yard and into the dunes.

“Where are we going?” Rey refuses to be cowed, to show fear, so she keeps her voice strong.

“Somewhere that I can teach you a proper lesson.” Master Ben’s grip tightens, squeezes with just enough pressure that the heat of him is making her weak-limbed and wet between her legs. “You want to ridicule me because I won’t give you what you want? That’s fine, but it won’t go unanswered.”

Rey holds her silence; it’s that, or admit that he’s right.

He takes her far away from the school, and she knows that no one will be able to sense them with much precision at this distance. Then he draws his lightsaber and says, “I’m not going easy on you today. Use the Force or your fists, I don’t care. Come at me with everything you’ve got.”

Rey still has the energy of her victory against the other Padawans coursing through her, and she’s stronger with a lightsaber than he is. _I can do this, I can do this._

He spins his saber almost lazily, then attacks her with an underhand strike. Rey deflects it, but there’s another blow, then another, the power of them rippling through the light of their weapons, jarring her to her bones. Even though she catches every one, it’s the hard expression on his face, the great strength he’s turning against her that’s stealing her concentration, scaring her. He’s never fought her like this before.

Master Ben circles around her before she can regain her footing, and then—she’s frozen, caught in the Force like a fly in a spider’s web. Her lightsaber pike spins away, extinguished. Rey tries to shout, but she’s trembling in his hold, without any power to move. Helpless, trapped—

She feels him release her a moment before a hard blow connects to her shoulder. He _pushed_ her, not with the Force, but with his hands, with the strength of his body, and Rey stumbles forward, hits the sand. It knocks the breath out of her, burns her palms as she tries to catch herself, then her cheek when she falls. She scrambles to her hands and knees, but then she’s being lifted off the ground by the back of her tunic, set on her feet.

Master Ben flashes her that small, half-smile that makes her ache, even now. “You’re not tired already are you?”

Her whole body still shakes, but Rey stands straighter. Draws herself up to her full height and summons her lightsaber pike back to her hands. Double blades sprout from its ends with a low, full-bodied hum. Golden, warm, a beacon in the fading twilight.

She holds her ground better this time, but Master Ben still comes at her fiercely, anger pouring through their connection, like a cloud of poison infecting the Force around them, liquid and dark. She lunges, burns him across the side, and thinks, _There, that’s it._

But Master Ben doesn’t falter. He pounds his fist against his stomach, and she sees blood drip to the sand, more black than red under the falling night. His pain shoots through their bond, lightning hot and quick, and it fuels his anger as much as it diminishes hers. It’s this, his rage, more than the threat of his body or his skill that frightens her.

It ends with her lightsaber pike twenty feet away, half-buried in the sand, and Rey on her back, winded, clutching her side. She has a half-dozen small burns, simple grazes at her arm, her shoulder, her cheek, both sides of her hips, across her ribs. It’s done, he’s won, but when she tries to get up, Master Ben drops to his knees and pushes her back down. Pins her wrists over her head with one great hand and stares down at her, his eyes round and dark.

Rey wants to hate it, to hate him, but she can’t. Every instinct she has screams to kiss him, to wrap her legs around his waist and give her body over to whatever manhandling he sees fit.

He wants it too; she can feel him hard against her thigh, can feel his passion burning through the Force between them.

“You won, all right?” Rey says, sobs. “You won.”

Master Ben’s anger seems to seep out of him at once. The rigidity of his shoulders smooths away, his twisted mouth slackens while his grip disappears from around her wrists. Then he’s off of her, lying on his back beside her in the sand.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Rey bites her lip to keep from crying. She won’t be able to speak without her voice breaking, so she whispers it across the line of their connection: _You’re always sorry. Try being better._

.

.

Rey wanders the grounds rather than trying to sleep. All she can think about is Master Ben anyway, and he’s having a nightmare tonight. She can always feel it when he can’t sleep, when his dreams are haunted by some specter Rey can never identify. She wonders what it is that bothers him so much, what keeps him awake at night.

So she walks around the school, once, twice, again, trying not to think about what happened on the dunes. Master Ben’s anger, their fight, her fear, and the way he held himself over her. He looked at her like he’d give anything to have her, and she felt him, hard, wanting, weak. Almost as weak as she’s been for him for so long.

Rey returns to her room in the middle of the night. Ben’s dreams subsided, whatever they were, and she falls to the bed without taking off her clothes.

There’s only the darkness, and then—

_A ship lands at Niima Outpost, and out comes the family Rey hasn’t seen in thirteen years. A tall woman with red hair that she keeps pulled up in a high bun. A hazel-eyed man whose robotic arm whirs as he gestures at Unkar Plutt. “Where’s our daughter?” he says. “We left her with you.”_

_Her mother points a blaster at Plutt. “You were supposed to take care of her, to keep her here, to keep her safe. Now tell us where she is.”_

Rey jerks awake, breath caught in her throat, choking her. They’re on Jakku! Her family. They came back. They came back for her, like she always dreamed, and she didn’t wait for them.

She stumbles out of bed, pulls on her boots, and runs straight to Ben’s room. She hardly even registers that he sleeps shirtless, only shakes him awake and says, “Ben, wake up. I need your help.”

He barely startles as he sits up and says, “What?”

“My parents are on Jakku! I saw them, just now. I had a vision—not a dream, a vision. It was different, it was really them _._ You have to get up, you have to come with me—”

Ben takes her hands in his. “Breathe. Take a moment to breathe, and I’ll fly you there. I promise.”

.

.

Disappointment shouldn’t surprise her. Not after all this time, all the years of waiting. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Her vision—her dream, she supposes—it felt so right, so _real._ But nothing has changed. Jakku remains a planet of sand, scalding sunlight, and scavenging creatures. Unkar Plutt still lords portions over everyone at Niima Outpost, and when she asks around, it becomes clear that there haven’t been any off-world visitors lately, certainly none asking for her.

Her old shelter is much the same as she left it. Rey finds the imperial walker buried in sand, but she unearths it with the Force. Inside, there are no clues that anyone has been here in the last seven years. Of course there aren’t; no one is coming back for her. They never were.

Rey allows herself to truly look at her old home. It’s a half-rigged hovel in the middle of nowhere, musty with the stink of abandoned things. She touches the wall where she recorded the passage of her days, runs her fingers over each tiny tally mark, and closes her eyes.

No one who loved her would leave her so long on a planet as rough as Jakku, in the care of a monster like Unkar Plutt. Her family is either dead or disinterested in her welfare, and Rey can’t believe that it’s taken her so long to accept that.

She scrubs at her face. Crying is nothing but a waste of water.

Master Ben touches her shoulder, and it brings Rey back to herself. She can feel his sympathy emanating through their bond, a sweet thrill of tenderness from this ungentle man.

Rey can’t help it—she turns toward him, wraps her arms around his chest, and buries her face against the curve of his shoulder. He’s so solid, warm and strong, and he smells of the desert: sand, sun, and sweat, same as she carries on her own skin.

Master Ben holds her close, almost too close, so tightly that it steals her breath. His fingers run through her hair, jerking it from its three buns. Rey hasn’t worn it like this in years, but she pulled it up on the way back to Jakku, because she wanted her parents to have some way to recognize her.

He isn’t careful, and she curses when one of the bands gets caught in her hair. But Master Ben untangles it, freeing her from that childish hairstyle that she’d only ever worn out of desperation. His touch softens, and now he’s cradling the back of her head, whispering nonsense that she barely hears. _You’re safe_ and _you’re not alone_ and _this isn’t anything you haven’t survived before_.

Rey burrows closer, leaning into the crook of his neck. His scent is stronger here, something that’s only him, buried underneath the smells of Jakku. She nuzzles his pulse point, the round apple of his throat. Ben doesn’t make a sound, but Rey can feel his restraint slipping. There’s the stirring of something dark and desperate, coming to life under his skin, twining itself around the bond between them. Rey can feel her desire echoed back at her, his lust every bit as powerful and possessive as her own.

She stands up on the tips of her toes, grabs him by that thick hair, and pulls him down for a kiss. It’s a brutal, one-sided meeting of mouths, hard and selfish—until Ben’s hands slide to her hips with enough force to bruise, yanking her higher, closer, and kisses her back. It’s sloppy, unpracticed, all need and no finesse, but Rey doesn’t care. Ben is touching her, kissing her, grabbing at her clothes.

He pulls away, gasping, and wipes the back of his trembling hand across his mouth. Then he says, “We can’t.”

Rey unbuckles her belt and lets it drop to the floor. Pulls off her boots and socks, shrugs out of her over-tunic. “We can, and I want to. Don’t you?”

Ben’s gaze goes hazy and a little bit stupid as she unbuttons her pants. Before she can pull them down, he strides over and grabs her wrists, so roughly that Rey winces. He stares down at her, his eyes black, roving over her rumpled clothes, her bare feet.

“I can feel it. How much you want me. All the things you think about doing to me,” Rey whispers. “Can’t we, just once? We never have to talk about it again.”

He’s shaking from his strong hands to his soft mouth—

Rey almost yelps when he drags her to the pallet on the floor. Ben strips off her pants and underwear, then pushes her down, flat on her back. He doesn’t bother to undress himself much, just unfastens his pants and shoves them down. His long tunic covers him almost to his knees, so she doesn’t even see his cock before he’s climbing on top of her, fitting himself between her thighs.

Rey grabs at his shirt, wraps her legs around his waist, gasps his name as he pushes inside of her. She’s embarrassingly wet just from kissing him, but it still hurts a little, and Ben doesn’t give her time to adjust before he’s thrusting, hard and fast, fucking her so roughly that she ends up pushed halfway off the pallet. He sits back on his knees, the grip on her hips growing firmer as he pumps between her legs. He’s so beautiful like this: lost and panting, his powerful body going rigid, then trembling all over as he comes.

Rey bites her lip to keep from whimpering when he pulls out of her. The dull pain is nothing to the empty ache that throbs through her whole body in the wake of their fucking. She knew that Ben couldn’t be any more experienced than her, but she’d hoped it would last a bit longer at least—

She feels a hot flush of embarrassment, so startling and fierce that it takes her a moment to realize it isn’t her own.

“Disappointed?” Ben asks.

Rey closes her legs, scowling. “Maybe you shouldn’t look through my thoughts if you’re not ready to find something you won’t like.”

Ben bows over her again, swearing, and shoves her tunic out of the way so he can kiss her belly, bite at the sharp point of her ribcage, suck the crest of her hipbone. When she realizes what he means to do, Rey beats at his broad shoulder and hisses, “Don’t! I’m a—a mess down there—”

“Don’t care.”

He waits, looking at her with those kiss-stung lips parted, wet and swollen, and Rey yanks at his hair, tugging him down between her legs.

She can’t stand to watch as he licks at her, but she feels it all over, the heat of his tongue thrumming through her whole body. Long, slow laps that send electric heat sparking along her spine. Then quick little licks, right where she wants it most. Rey holds onto his hair tighter, forcing his lush mouth to use her harder, until she’s quivering, until she feels like she’s falling apart.

“More. Need more,” she whines.

Ben slides a finger into her, then two, then three, thrusting in and out of her sex as he licks and sucks, the slick sounds overloud in the shadowed quiet—

Rey bites her knuckles, muffling her moans as she comes. The pleasure is too sudden, too much, too good. A sob catches in her throat, sharp and suffocating, as Ben licks her through the aftershocks, bringing her back down.

Then it’s over, and Rey is struck by the urge to cry again. It was better than she could’ve imagined, having Ben, being wanted and used by him, and now she’ll never be able to rid herself of this need that’s been infecting her heart for years.

Rey keeps her gaze trained straight up, at the skeletal, durasteel roof of her old home, when she says, “I love you, you know.”

Ben rubs a hand over his face, pulls at his hair, and says, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Rey asks. “You don’t owe me anything.”

When she sits up he grabs her arm, yanks her back down, pulling her on top of him, so close that she could count the beauty marks on his face. She can smell sex all over him, all over herself, and his lips glisten with the wetness he just kissed away from her. It embarrasses her now that the act is done, that she let him do those things to her.

Rey swipes her hand across his mouth, cleaning up the slick mess of his come, the pale pink of her own blood. She rubs it off on the stale blankets under them, her cheeks scalding hot.

Ben tangles his hand in her hair and kisses her, slow and languorous now. The taste on his tongue is as cloying and lewd as she expected. It makes her legs feel even weaker, but she straddles his waist, kisses back just as deeply, lazily.

Their kisses soften, grow farther apart and more tender, until they're only holding each other, breathing in the same air, the silence between them charged with possibilities and the risks that come with them.

Rey nestles close, hiding her face in the coarse bedding, their cheeks barely touching. He runs one hand up and down her back, under her sweaty shirt, while the other strokes her hip. He’s so gentle in the aftermath that it’s almost difficult to believe how rough he was when he fucked her.

When his caresses fall still, Rey sits up and asks, “So what now?”

Ben swallows heavily, plays with the hem of her shirt, his gaze settled somewhere around her mouth.

“You’re not a knight yet,” he whispers. “You can’t break vows you haven’t taken.”

“ _You_ can,” Rey says. “You just did.”

Ben smirks, but it’s more dark than amused. “I think we both know I’m no Jedi anyway. Not really.”

She wants to disagree, but she can’t, not without lying. When they’re away from the academy, out from under Master Luke’s watch, she’s seen Ben misuse the Force in more ways than she can count. To steal, coerce. To hurt, sometimes only for the sake of slaking his anger. It should probably bother her more, maybe even disgust her, but Rey grew up in his shadow. She’s so used to Ben’s ways that even the worst of him stopped surprising her long ago.

He looks up at her, his lips parted and gaze hungry, roaming over her, everywhere but her eyes. It makes Rey want to kiss him, to strip him out of his clothes and fuck him again, just like this, with his strong body trapped under her.

“What exactly are you saying?” Rey asks.

She doesn’t want to deal in vague, coy promises. Not about this, not when her heart has already been abused and abandoned.

Ben finally looks at her directly, his dark eyes steady when he says, “We could do this again. We could keep doing this, until you commit yourself to the Order.”

Rey’s throat tightens. She takes a steadying breath and asks, “What if I don’t want to become a Jedi? What if I’d rather be with you?”

Ben’s smile is a small, bitter thing. “You won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

He’s wrong. She’s loved him for so long that her need has been driven down into the deepest, most buried parts of her. It’s unshakeable, this thread that binds her to him, and the worst part is that Rey doesn’t even care. She’ll take whatever he can give her, for as long as he’s willing to give it, and be thankful.

.

.

He has her again in the morning, and there’s something infinitely satisfying about being fucked on the very bed where she spent a thousand nights alone. The place where she prayed for someone to come for her, to want her, to love her.

It’s not any kinder this time, and it feels even less personal with her face buried in the musty bedding, her wrists tied behind her back with his belt. It’s her fantasy, the one she pictured in the training yard months ago. Rey almost thanks him for giving it to her, for bringing her most shameful imaginings to life, but she can’t work her tongue around the embarrassment of being so _known_ , can’t make herself express gratitude for having her privacy violated.

He already got her off with his fingers, and now it feels overwhelming and exposing to be bound, opened, and taken. She stays balanced on the edge of coming again, the rough diligence of his thrusts almost but not quite enough to get her there.

Afterward, Rey lies with her face pressed into the filthy blankets, breathing in the stink of neglect and the stink of their bodies, so love-worn that she laughs, then chokes on a sob, then laughs some more.

_We could do this again_ , Ben said last night. _We could keep doing this._

And here they are, already doing it today, but the only thing Rey can think now is that, when she finally voiced her love, all she’d gotten in return was an apology.

“Are you all right?” Ben hurries to untie her, then pulls her into his arms, pressing his lips to her cheeks, her nose, her mouth. Soft little not-quite-kisses, and it hurts even more, somehow, when this unkind man is gentle with her.

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	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! I'm so glad to be sharing the finale of this fic with you guys. Many thanks to my beta deeppoeticgirl for jumping in to help with this last chapter, and ReyloTrashCompactor for all of her work on this story.
> 
> And thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments on this fic! Y'all are amazing, and you make writing in this fandom such a lovely experience.

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**THE BELONGING YOU SEEK**

**(it is ahead)**

_\- six months later -_

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Master Luke corners Ben in the workshop, interrupts him from tinkering on a droid, and says, “I think Rey is ready. The Force has always been so strong in her, and in the last few months she’s finally developed the restraint I’d been hoping to see. Has she done well in the field with you?”

Ben calls upon all of his self-control to keep from showing his fear, either on his face or through the Force. Rey’s place in his life is on the line, and he can’t let her go. Not now, not yet.

“She always does far better than _well_ on our missions, but I don’t see the restraint you’re talking about. She’s still reckless, insubordinate, and prone to anger.”

Master Luke smiles, but there’s more disappointment in it than anything else. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

Ben sets down his wrench too hard, and the sharp clack echoes around the quiet of the workshop. “Yes, well, I’ve probably been a bad influence, right?”

“Not too bad, apparently. Because she _is_ ready, Ben.” His uncle’s expression gentles, and he says, “I know you don’t want to lose Rey as your Padawan, but it isn’t as though you’ll never see one another again.”

Ben cuts the foulest look he can muster at Master Luke. “I know that. I understand how this works.”

His uncle clasps his shoulder. “She’s going to be inducted into the order next month. I’m sending the two of you on a mission, nothing too demanding, most likely. Just an ambassador in need of extra protection while he’s brokering annual negotiations on Hosnian Prime.”

Ben swallows down his gratitude and ignores the whisper in his ear, _It doesn’t have to be this way. You could keep her, if you want._

He knows now, who it is hiding in the back of his head, doling out pain, murmuring promises, giving advice and praise like hard candy to a well-performing child. Ben knows, but he’s too scared to acknowledge it.

He can’t sleep that night. There’s a blazing pulse behind his eyes, burning and stabbing all over, like someone lit a dark fire under his skull.

_You know what you have to do_ , shouts the voice. _So do it._

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.

He doesn’t tell Rey about her knighthood on the first day of their mission. Or the second, or the third, or the tenth. Ben keeps it to himself, because as long as Rey keeps treating him like a teacher, like a lover, he can pretend for a little longer that this isn’t about to end.

Their ward is old Jendis Dayal, who’s still paranoid about an assassination attempt made on his life twenty years ago. But he’s a friend of Mom’s, so Master Luke lends out one or two of his Jedi every year when the the ambassador brokers new terms for his planet on Hosnian Prime. He and Rey spend their days shadowing the ambassador and their nights guarding his sleep, but there are still free moments here and there that they can steal.

Today, while Dayal takes tea with a cohort of New Republic diplomats (and their bodyguards), Ben pulls Rey into an alleyway to kiss her. She moans into his mouth, grabs his hand and guides it down her pants, then lets him fuck her with his fingers until she comes. It takes less than a minute before he feels her sex quivering, tight and supple by turns. Tears gather in her eyes and her legs go rigid, her breath short and high-pitched.

“That’s it,” he says. “Good girl.”

It’s a fortunate thing that the city is so noisy, because the hand he claps over Rey’s mouth doesn’t quite drown out her cries.

Now that he knows every inch of her body, every trick to unravel her, it’s always easy to get her off. Ben loves breaking her, almost as much as he loves putting her back together afterward with slow, wet kisses and whispered promises.

Ben loves her, there’s no question of that. It’s the _how_ of it that rankles, but he hardly cares to piece it out anymore. Somehow it seems to matter less, whether he wants to teach her or fuck her or both, when the opportunity for all of it is slipping away. Fear ripples through him, a sick creeping cold all along his body. This is almost over. He only has a few days to keep kissing her, taking her, giving himself—

“A few days?” Rey asks. “What do you mean?”

She’s still breathless, trembling, and for a moment he forgot that the border between their hearts always weakens after they make love. Something in them draws closer together when their bodies do, and now she’s heard him, now she knows.

No matter; he had to tell her eventually. “Master Luke wants to induct you to the order as soon as we get back to Tatooine.”

Ben looks away. He can’t watch the bright smile overtake her face, can’t see how much she wants this. Wants it more than him, maybe, even if she’ll never admit as much. He knows her, he _feels_ her, and Rey has it in her to choose responsibilities over love. She’s like his mother in that way.

She cups his cheeks between her hands, tips his face down so that she can stand up on her toes and kiss him properly. When their lips soften apart, she says, “I don’t have to choose. I’ll keep all my vows but one, and that might not make me a perfect Jedi, but I don’t know that we understand all the ways of the light. And anyway, I’ve never believed what we’re doing is wrong. Do you?”

Ben rests his forehead against Rey’s, breathes out her name, and says, “No. Something that feels this right could never be wrong.”

.

.

When they return to Tatooine, Rey takes a knee before Master Luke and accepts her knighthood with his hand on her shoulder, same as Ben did ten years ago. He feels the light emanating from Rey, weaving around every Jedi in the room, but it scatters when it approaches him. Spooks, like a frightened animal, and hurries back to his girl.

That night, he and Rey sneak out to the desert. They sit side by side, holding hands, looking at each other while the stars look on them.

They’re far from the academy, but it’s a night for whispering. Quiet talk and quieter secrets. So he keeps his voice low when he asks, “How do you feel?”

Rey smiles at him in the bright way that crinkles the corners of her eyes and makes her look a hundred years younger than he feels. But then she hauls herself onto his lap, long legs wrapped securely around his waist while she presses darting kisses to his forehead, the tip of his nose, his lips, his chin.

“I feel like I love you,” she says. “Like I always will.”

.

.

Promises are sweet, but something changes in Rey after she dedicates herself to the light, a bond that Ben never quite managed to forge so deeply. If he’d known, he never would have agreed to this after they made love in that alley on Hosnian Prime.

Now that she’s no longer his student, Rey has missions of her own, often far from him for weeks and months at a time. Master Luke wants him to take a new Padawan, but it would be pointless. He’s only ever wanted Rey, first as a student, and now in every way there is.

They meet between missions, their first chance to see one another in over a month, and all Rey can talk about is the ancient Jedi temple she combed for artifacts.

“You should have seen it, Ben! This place must be a thousand years old, and the carvings alone were—”

He kisses her, trying to silence her talk and remind her why they’re here, but Rey pulls away, scowling.

She slaps his chest, only annoying, not painful. “I’m trying to tell you something important.”

“I haven’t seen you in six weeks!” Ben says. “I want to hold you, kiss you—”

“I suppose that’s all you ever want, isn’t it?” Rey asks. “To fuck me.”

“That isn’t true—”

“No? So if I got on my back and spread my legs right now you wouldn’t fall between them?”

Ben catches her wrist and pulls her to his chest. “Don’t sound too enthused by the prospect, sweetheart.”

Rey glances down, then back up at him with the same besotted look she still sometimes wears when she lays eyes on him. But she’s so grown now, and she’s had him a hundred times. Teenage lust wears off, and so does first love. Maybe now that the shine has worn away, she doesn’t want him anymore. Ben keeps his mind closed to her; that’s one question he isn’t ready to have answered. Not yet.

They don’t fuck, and they don’t talk either. Rey goes back to Tatooine, and Ben heads to the Rakai system for his next assignment.

.

.

It doesn’t happen overnight, of course. Love takes time to build, and time to fall apart. It can’t be killed through one act, one betrayal. No, it takes months of promises quietly broken and grudgingly kept, the corrosion of lies and disappointment, to unwind what they’ve spent years working toward.

.

.

Ben pushes his uncle’s patience as much as he wants after his fight with Rey. He abandons one mission and ruins another by strangling a Chiss with the Force. The man’s blue face turned purple, and he passed out before Ben’s blood cooled. By the time he recognized the weight of his actions, he was shaking, the voice in the back of his head overpowering, telling him how well he’d done. It was the first praise Ben had heard in a long time, and it soothed him more than it should have.

“What were you thinking?” Luke asks. “That’s the dark side, Ben. That’s everything you’ve been guarding yourself against for twenty years.”

Just hearing that number wearies him. He’s followed this path for so long, this path he never wanted, that Ben knows no other way.

But maybe he should make another. Forge ahead on his own and embrace his nature instead of drowning in light that doesn’t even want him.

Rey climbs into his bed that night. Ben strokes his hand up and down her back, then runs his fingers through her long hair. He says her name, and when she won’t look at him, he flips her onto her back and kisses her. It’s been months, and she’s as desperate for his touch as he is for hers, but they have to be careful. Drowning their presence in the Force takes control, and control is hard to maintain when they’re fucking.

“Remember to—”

“I know,” she whispers between kisses, tugging down his pants. “But I need you in me.”

.

.

Ben dreams of the academy on fire, bodies all around, and a man in a mask wielding a sparking, scarlet lightsaber. Darkness radiates off of him as he cuts down every master, knight, and student, flanked by shadow men. Then he turns to Ben, looks straight at him, the black of his presence in the Force colder than ice. And even though the masked man is a stranger, Ben fears that they know each other somehow.

.

.

When he throws one of his fellow Masters across the room for impertinence, his uncle grounds him to Tatooine.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I can’t let you leave, not like this,” Master Luke says. “I can help you find your way again, if you’ll only let me.”

Ben buries his head in his hands, shaking all over. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, how to stop it, or even if he should.

When Rey visits him in his cell—where he’s been staying for a week, a self-imposed imprisonment for the sake of his peers—she stands beside the closed door, watching him warily.

“You won’t even come near me?” Ben asks.

His voice is hoarse; he hasn’t used it in days. The only companion he’s had has been the voice, telling him to do ugly, violent things. To free himself instead of sitting in this cage for the sake of weaklings.

“You said on Jakku that if it came down to it, you’d choose me over the Jedi way. Is that still true?”

Rey makes a choked sound, but she has the courage to look at him when she says, “I would leave the Jedi, but not the light. Please don’t—” She bows her head now, and he can feel it, everything that’s tearing her apart. Love warring against purpose, against honor. “Please don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Something breaks inside him, and the voice— _Snoke’s voice_ —floods over his whole body.

_Kill Skywalker and his ignorant acolytes. Leave now, while you can, before Rey is taken away from you._

“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” Ben cries. “Please get out, just get out, just leave me alone…” He pulls at his hair, bites his lip to keep from screaming against the white-hot burning itch under his skin, the creatures crawling through his mind in the darkness—

“Ben?”

The pain disappears as suddenly as it began, and the slithering voice in his ear goes with it.

Rey rushes over, drops to her knees by his side, and asks, “What happened? Are you all right?”

She’s looking at him with wide, wet eyes, as if the sight of his pain is still enough to hurt her too. Then she cups his cheek, and her hand is so blessedly cool against his skin that for a moment, Ben leans into it. Turns his face toward her touch and basks in the warmth of her love. It’s as compassionate and gentle as the light, as volatile and selfish as the dark. Rey wants to hold him until he calms, to soothe and protect him. But she also wants to kiss him while he’s weak and needy, so that he’ll kiss her back like he hasn’t done in weeks. Maybe touch her, maybe—

Ben shudders at the thought, at all she’s been to him: the only true family as he’s ever had, a child in need of guidance, his equal in the Force, his protege, his only friend—simply _his_ , his scavenger girl, his Rey, and no one else’s.

_I’m still yours_ , Rey whispers through the line of their bond. _I want to stay yours._

Then she climbs into his lap, wraps her legs around his waist, and presses soft kisses to his jaw. She’s a sweet weight against this body, so soft in his arms. And he can’t think, not with her rocking on him, riding his lap with practiced, rhythmic movements until he’s hard and gasping. Licking the tears off of his cheek and saying his name again and again, her voice growing higher pitched and whinier every time he bucks up between her legs. She’s getting loud, too loud, so Ben smothers her voice with his hand.

He’s going to lose her soon. She’ll be stolen away by this path he’ll never stay on, and Ben can’t stand the thought of it. He wants to keep her, to be free of her, to throw her off of him and be sick, to fuck her—

She rips his hand away, uncovering her mouth, then kisses his palm and sucks on his first two fingers, whimpering around them as she rocks against him harder, faster. He thinks of her sucking his cock instead, and has to bury his face in her hair to muffle his moans, so close he can feel it through every inch of his body, and he thinks Rey is too. He’s almost gotten her off just from this, barely even touching her. She loves him that much, wants him that much, even now.

Ben yanks his fingers out of Rey’s mouth and flips her onto her back. Fucks against her, thrusting between her legs through the layers of their clothes, need burning through his blood as he bites her shoulder and comes. He jerks against her through the pleasure, teeth clenched hard around her flesh, drawing a sob from her.

_Mine, always mine_ , Ben thinks, as he pulls her pants down and rips her underwear in his haste to get them off. There’s no resistance at all when he slides three fingers inside of her, Rey is so wet, so open to him. He works her as roughly as he wants, and it only takes a few seconds before her sex tightens and quivers. She bites her own knuckles and fucks herself on his fingers, but he can still hear her trying to say his name as she shakes, back arched, hips lifted fully off the ground.

Then she’s pushing at his hand, begging him to stop. “It hurts now, it’s too much.”

Ben pulls away and licks her wetness off of his fingers. She tastes sharper than he does, more bitter than salty, and it sends another electric jolt through his sated body. He loves her taste, loves the way she always comes for him, how much she wants him when they allow themselves to have each other.

He falls back against the stone floor and gives himself a minute to breathe, to feel his heart pounding without thinking about what they’ve just done.

Rey settles next to him and starts kissing his throat. Lazy little nips and open-mouthed sucking between whispers. “That felt so good,” she says, her voice trembling. “You felt so good.”

Then there’s a murmur he can’t ignore: _take the girl away from here, and you can keep her forever_.

Rey is smiling at him, fragile and shy, full of a tender, easily lost sort of love. He can feel it all over her, all over himself—and so can the rest of this school, dozens of acolytes witness to the ripple of their passion through the Force. Teachers and Padawans and Master Luke.

Ben pulls away from Rey, sits up, and grabs her by the arm. “We have to leave,” he says. “We have to leave right now.”

“What?”

“Just listen to me!” Ben shouts.

Rey scrambles to her feet while he cleans himself and changes pants. He’s never been more thankful to own so little, because he has nothing to pack, and neither does Rey. He grabs her by the hand and runs out of the academy, leading her to the nearest ship.

“What are we doing?” Rey asks. “I know we lost control, but, we can’t just—”

“We’re getting out of here,” Ben says. “Stealing a ship. Now come on!”

Rey hesitates, thinking, weighing what she wants. The life she’s chosen against a love that’s hanging on by a thread. And in the time it takes her to decide, his uncle comes out of the academy and storms over to them, a bright fury in his eyes, the like of which Ben has never seen from him before.

.

.

Rey has been sent to her cell to meditate, but Ben has to face Luke. His uncle sits across from him, not quite calmed, even now. Apparently what it takes to earn any true anger from him is betrayal.

“How could you?” he asks. “She was your student.”

Ben stays perfectly still, pushing down his sickness with himself. It’s been some time since he felt as guilty as he should about that, and he doesn’t want to feel it again.

“Please tell me it didn’t start until after she took her vows,” Luke says, his voice choked.

Ben smiles tightly. “I could, but it would be a lie.”

It seems Luke is afraid to ask _when_ precisely Ben took his girl to bed, and he doesn’t care to volunteer that information. It isn’t his uncle’s business, and besides, it barely matters if he assumes something dirtier than the truth. Luke has always thought the worst of him anyway.

“I need to talk to her,” Ben says. “Before I go.”

Luke frowns. “You can’t make her leave with you.”

Ben almost laughs, because no one can _make_ Rey do anything. “Of course not, but I have to ask.”

.

.

The walk through the school seems a thousand miles long. Rey’s cell isn’t far from the room where Luke lectured him, but this is the last he’ll see of the place that took most of his life, and Ben doesn’t know how to feel about that.

He leads Rey out to the dunes, so that they can watch the twin suns setting. Whatever she says, he knows that he wants a moment of calm and beauty in which to hear it. They hold hands as the sky turns gold, red, blue, then black. The stars come out, and Ben wonders how far he’ll have to wander before he finds his way.

Rey says his name, so quietly that he can hardly hear her, even in the cool hush of the night. “Are you leaving me behind?”

He squeezes her hand, hard. “Not if you’ll come with me.”

There’s no hesitation; Rey throws herself into his arms, crying and saying, “I love you, I need you, I—I don’t care if you go to the ends of the galaxy, I’m coming with you—”

Ben finds that he’s crying too, tears sliding down his face to color the taste of their kiss with salt. She’s all he needs, all he’s ever needed. Rey is choosing their love over the life they were destined for, choosing _him_.

Snoke’s voice roars awake, and Rey startles in his arms. She feels it, hears it, this dark thing that has haunted Ben all his days. He isn’t alone anymore, he isn’t alone—

Rey shouts, then hugs him more fiercely, and the embrace of her body is nothing compared to the embrace of her spirit. The fortitude of her mind, the strength of her presence in the Force, have always been unparalleled, and it’s almost _easy_ for her to push Snoke away. The darkness screams, but it’s the deafening cry of the defeated.

And then there’s nothing. Silence. The quiet of all besides his own thoughts, and Ben knows that, even though Snoke will come back, he’ll have Rey’s help now. She’ll keep him safe.

.

.

Rey’s favorite worlds are the ones that are lush with growing life, so they search out the greenest places in the galaxy. Then they go to white winterlands and blue ocean cities and space stations stranded in the middle of the stars. There’s only one rule regarding their destinations, and it’s simple: no deserts.

This isn’t wandering, what he and Rey do, because the belonging they’ve both sought has never been in any particular place. They carry it with them now, wherever they go.

.

.


End file.
